Flight
by Readythedrums
Summary: Eren Yeager has never dreamed of flying. And that's just fine by him. Really.


**A/N:** I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting fanfiction! This is the combined efforts of a few different things I've been working on: ideas based off my personal life (which I _rarely_ ever do), high narration and low dialogue, and fast-paced action. Hopefully it worked out!

* * *

Eren Yeager has never dreamt of flying.

Not that he cared. There were a few instances, here and there – he'd leap in a dream, maybe, only to fall feet-over-head back onto the ground. Once, he dreamed he was standing in the yard of his old schoolhouse, his classmates egging him on. They even stood in two lines, allowing him to run between them to leap off. But he just fell, and they laughed and pointed.

It never really got to him until Armin described a dream to him once.

"…and then I was _flying_. Arms out like—like this—" He stuck his arms out horizontally to demonstrate. "And then it was like, _whoosh_, and I went right over the wall! And there was green _everywhere_, Eren!"

Eren kicked the ground with a huff, and said nothing.

He cornered Mikasa later.

"A few times," she said, after he asked. "Nothing special. I just sort of…float. I'll be sitting cross-legged in the sky, just floating. It's nice."

He really didn't care that much. Why did he even ask? It was a stupid question.

The evening after the titans breached Wall Maria, Eren stopped dreaming altogether. Happy or sad, nightmare or not, he simply stopped dreaming. He was expecting nightmares, he was expecting seeing his mother die, again and again.

Instead there was nothing. But nothing he could deal with.

The matter slipped his mind. There were more important things to preoccupy him, like attack formations and sword fighting techniques. It wasn't for nearly a two years, when he found himself standing on a rickety old wooden scaffolding overlooking the neighboring town, that the matter arose again.

"Is this a joke?" Jean muttered from behind him. "They're messing with us, right? I'm not jumping off this."

"If you can find another way of reaching a 15 meter tall titan's neck, Kirschtein, be my guest," Keith snapped. Jean muttered something rude under his breath. "In the meantime, who wants to be our first volunteer? Rules are simple. First: get to the building with the red roof there," he pointed to a red-roofed building among a sea of beige. "Second: don't fall. Who volunteers to go first?"

Mikasa stepped forward wordlessly, to no one's surprise. Keith nodded, and the group split into two to give her room to jump. As Eren shuffled and moved to the sides with everyone else, he got an uncomfortable pang of recognition in his gut. He couldn't quite put a finger on why.

Everyone clapped and cheered her name, and Mikasa stood at the back of the scaffolding. She took a moment and closed her eyes and exhaled quietly before breaking into a sprint. Her maneuver gear rattled and clanged at her hips as she ran, and she hid her chin under her scarf, eyes hard. Her foot connected with the edge of the scaffolding, and she leaped. For one long, horrible second, Eren watched her fly through the air, weightless. But the maneuver gear whirred to life, and the cables burst out. They connected with a nearby home, and Mikasa all but disappeared into a cloud of steam, thrusted forward by her hips with the force of the cables. The others on the scaffolding went nuts, cheering and clapping and screaming, "Mikasa! Mikasa!"

She flipped in the air, and the cables retracted, only to connect with the house with the red roof. She was thrusted forward once again, and with a slight stumble landed on her feet on the roof. She retracted the cables into the gear, steadied herself, and then waved.

The others whooped and hollered and pushed each other aside to fight for the next turn. The scaffolding below them wobbled dangerously, and Armin grabbed onto Eren to keep steady.

"It's just like flying," Reiner said, his face split into a wide grin. "Incredible."

"I used to dream about flying," Sasha breathed. "I'm going next!"

"Wait," Keith said, "don't go just ye—"

But with a skip and a holler of glee, Sasha leaped off the scaffolding and propelled herself to the house with the red roof. She collapsed onto the tile more messily than Mikasa did, but rolled until she ended up on her rear, laughing.

"It's so much better than the dreams!" she yelled to them.

Keith made a sound of distaste among the trainees' din.

"I'm going next," Eren called. Reiner and Bertholdt both slapped him on the back for luck, and the others shuffled out of the way once again, albeit this time with a little more humor in their yelling.

Eren set his jaw and focused his gaze on the red roof, where Sasha was cheering and Mikasa was standing silently, her arms crossed. She nodded, and Eren took a running leap off the scaffolding.

His immediate thought was that he had made a mistake. His legs worked wildly in the air, and his arms pinwheeled to grab for a ledge that didn't exist. He didn't feel the wind through his hair like Armin had described; it wasn't relaxing or calming like Mikasa said it was, years and years ago. For the second that he hovered in the air, Eren was terrified.

But he squeezed the triggers on his swords, and the cables shot forward and connected to the nearest house, thrusting him forward. The air whipped his hair back and yanked his mouth open, and Eren had to resist the urge to shut his eyes against the harsh wind. He righted himself with some difficulty, just in time to narrowly avoid the edge of the house and to connect to the the red roof. He flipped in the air, and landed on the roof, hard, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. The tiles splintered and dug through his jacket into his arm, and he cried out in shock and pain.

He laid there on the roof for what seemed like a very long time, gritting his teeth and blocking out the pain. When he finally raised his head, Mikasa was kneeling in front of him, offering out her hand. He took it, and she helped him to his feet.

Eren turned and pumped his fists into the air. The trainees clapped and cheered his name, and the fight for who would go next began once again.

"Are you alright?" Mikasa asked when he turned around.

Eren placed a hand over his injured arm. "I've never had a dream where I was able to fly. Did I ever tell you that?"

She raised an eyebrow. "No."

"In retrospect, I think I'm grateful. I don't think humans were meant to fly."

"Since when were you ever worried about what humans were _meant_ to do?" Mikasa said, surprise biting into her voice. "Humans weren't meant to kill titans, either. The Eren I know would learn, if it meant he were able to kill just one more titan."

Eren blinked once, then twice, then snorted, then burst into outright laughter. It was stiff, and a little forced, but it was the most he had laughed in over two years. "Hell, why not. I'll add that to the list. Only I'll learn how to fly without the maneuver gear!"

"Now you're getting ahead of yourself."

"Just watch me, I'll do it!"

"I'll do it too!" Sasha interjected, pumping her fists. "We'll be the first humans to ever fly like a bird!"

Mikasa rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, leaving the two to yell excitedly and point towards the sky, beyond where the edges of the wall could just be seen over the horizon.


End file.
